Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (10 page)

‘Uh…’ Managing to untangle her arms enough to pat Trudy on the back, Penny was a little nonplussed as to what she should do with a distraught mugging victim. ‘Uh, I guess I won’t then. There there, you’re safe now.’ When were the damn police going to get there?

~~~

Twilight allowed herself a small smile. The tall blonde in the Victoria’s Secret outfit looked distinctly uncomfortable with a civilian clinging to her like an octopus with mommy issues. The blonde was new; Twilight could not recall having seen her before anyway. From the punch Twilight had seen, she had more power than skill, and the outfit was… What was it with pretty Ultras and skimpy costumes? Still, if you had it, and she clearly had it, and you were apparently bulletproof, why not flaunt it?

The sound of radio chatter in her ear told her that the cops would be there in a few seconds. No need to intervene to save a fellow Ultra from an overactive fan. Turning, Twilight moved off through the bushes, keeping to the shadows and moving in silence. No one was going to notice her.

~~~

Something moving in the undergrowth caught Penny’s eye and she turned her head to look. She doubted anyone else would have seen the slim figure moving away, but the darkness was nothing to Penny.

A woman, probably a few inches shorter than Cygnus, and a couple taller than Penny. The outfit looked to be all black, a full bodysuit, and a mask which covered her hair and eyes. There was something on her back. A sword?

She was probably another Ultra. Or maybe one of the unpowered people who felt they should use their skills to fight crime. Penny had never previously understood the latter. Ultras had abilities which gave them a significant edge, especially when their opponents also had powers. Some of the N-class types, the unpowered, would take on real Ultras. Maybe having a sword would make a difference under those circumstances.

Whatever, her dark watcher was leaving and, from the sounds of running feet, the police were arriving.

‘Uh, Miss? The police are here. You can, uh, let go now,’ Penny suggested.

Trudy just held on tighter.

Well, maybe the cops could get a crowbar or something…

~~~

‘Some of them get like that,’ Sergeant Briggs said. ‘It’s worse when they’re from some Podunk town in the middle of nowhere. The shock tends to make them clingy.’

‘I’m glad there’s a precinct right on the edge of the park,’ Penny said. ‘I mean, I’m strong, but I don’t think I could have got her off me without hurting her. She’ll be okay, right?’

‘She’ll be fine. We’ve got a counsellor coming in to talk to her.’ He stopped, looking around at the silent room. ‘Maybe we should get her to talk to this lot too. I think they were all bottle fed.’ A dozen police officers suddenly rediscovered the paperwork they had been working on before Penny walked in with Briggs.

‘Maybe I should go,’ Penny suggested, ‘before I disrupt your work any more than I have.’

‘We’ve had worse disruptions. A couple of years ago Ultranova was fighting Tower Block up and down the park. Blasted right through the squad room.’

Penny grinned at him. ‘I remember seeing that on the news. Oh, do you happen to know an Ultra that works this area? A girl, black catsuit and a sword?’

‘Sounds like that Twilight chick,’ one of the nearby officers supplied.

Briggs gave a grunt. ‘She’s a quiet one. We don’t see her much, but she drops off goons with their wrists tied together every so often. You’ve seen her?’

‘Tonight. I think she’d have been the one Trudy was glued to if I hadn’t got there first.’

Briggs gave her an odd sort of look. ‘No. Believe me, she wouldn’t.’

9
^th
September.

There was a moment when Twilight was not in the room at the top of an apartment block on Cooper Street West, and then she was there, her eyes scanning her surroundings carefully, just in case. She had done her best to ensure that her apartment was secure and that her identity remained a secret, but still she checked whenever she came home.

There was, as usual, nothing wrong. She pulled the Velcro holding her holster to her thigh free and removed the belt with its numerous pouches. Her Glock 20 was removed from the holster, stripped of its magazine, and the safety was checked. Next came the harness over her back and chest which held her sword in place. Finally she freed and removed her mask.

She shook her head and ruffled out the mop of black hair which had been hidden beneath the fabric. Maybe a shower before bed. It was two in the morning and she would need to be up at eight, but she had trained herself to operate on less sleep than the standard eight hours. This would be pushing it…

Sitting down, she pulled her boots off, slowly. They were built to be tight, ballistic cloth under a PVC-like plastic, like the suit and gloves. The body armour would stop a knife, even a bullet if she was lucky, though that tended to hurt like Hell. Twilight had trained to avoid getting hit by any of them; the suit was insurance.

She pulled off her gloves and unzipped the front of the suit. The zip went down a long way because she had adapted it from some sort of kinky PVC catsuit. She had thought about sewing it up a bit, but it was easier to get in and out of the thing with the long zip. She peeled herself out of the tight garment, and got up to slide it down her long legs.

Twilight sighed, closed her eyes for a second, and became Andrea Morgan. The shop she worked at was only half a mile away; she could get up a little later.

~~~

Going back to work after a night spent flying the skies of the city hunting for criminals was something of a let-down. Penny had soared through the sky and swooped down to stop a mugging, and the woman she had protected had been so grateful it was embarrassing. The thrill of it had been amazing and she knew she had bored June half to death with it for far too long before going to bed.

Now she was back in the same old office, answering the same calls from unappreciative idiots who had forgotten some vital this or that, and talking to useless men who thought that accounting was the most important thing in the world. She wanted to grab them by the lapels and yell at them.

Instead she sat calmly at her desk and transcribed notes from a meeting Thorpe had attended and, as usual, scribbled down things he wanted recorded in spidery handwriting. At least she had more time to go over them this time, and there were less of them. It had to have been something important; Thorpe normally batched his notes up for transcription. Penny thought he did it just to annoy her. He never gave them to his own PA, a vapid platinum blonde named Kylie. This special torture was reserved for Penny.

About midway through the transcript she got to the attendees and sighed. Those would have to be listed at the top, of course. Why he could not manage to order his notes logically she could never fathom. Returning to the top of the document, she started listing names and one of them almost immediately stood out: J. Tonaldo.

The Tonaldos ran crime in the north of the city, that was what Red and Bobby had said. What was he doing in a meeting with Thorpe? Well, they had to have legitimate businesses as well as criminal enterprises. How else did you explain your income to the IRS?

She flicked over what she had already transcribed. Normally the contents of the notes went through her without registering and this time had been no exception. It was a new account, a company called DeWitt Imports. Penny had never heard of them, but that was hardly a surprise. Leighton and Thorpe had got the auditing contract after the previous auditors had had their licence pulled. According to the notes, Thorpe had met with the board, which meant that a Tonaldo sat on the board of one of their clients.

Well, nothing to be done about it now, even if something needed doing. She would take a look at the company listing at home.

~~~

Radium Comics only survived because it catered to a very exclusive clientele: the hard-core comic book buyer. Oh, there were the current issues at the front to keep the kids happy should any of them enter, but the real shop was at the back where you could get just about every comic ever printed, if you had the money to do it. In some cases that was a
lot
of money.

The owner, Roger Wentworth Peters, was a laidback sort of man, the result of taking
way
too many drugs in the eighties when he had been a member of a punk band named ‘Nuclear Winter.’ Andrea had listened to one of their albums once and given up after two tracks. The comics he had scripted and inked in the nineties were a little too drug-addled for her tastes as well, but they proved he was a talented man.

Roger liked his employees, all two of them, to dress appropriately. That meant something vaguely clichéd in the way of punk or Goth, or similar. So Andrea came to work in too much make-up and a lot of black. She liked the black, but not the make-up, even though she was quite skilled at applying it. Roger picked his employees primarily based on whether he fancied them, even though he never actually propositioned any of them. His view on the matter was that attractive staff persuaded nerds to part with money more easily than unattractive staff did. Andrea had to admit that his strategy worked better than she thought it should.

‘Hey, Andrea.’ That was Zoe, the blonde in the slashed T-shirt and jeans who was Roger’s other employee. Andrea looked up from filing some new buys on the racks and raised an eyebrow. Zoe was used to her colleague being less than talkative. ‘Want to go out on Friday?’

‘It’s Monday and you’re planning Friday night already?’ Andrea replied. She had a soft, husky sort of voice which she had been told was pleasant to listen to and rather sexy. That was just as well; she had spent enough time cultivating it.

‘Well yeah. I wanted to go to the Huntress’ Den and…’

‘You know they’ll let me in because I’ve been there before.’

Zoe giggled. ‘Uh-huh.’

Andrea looked back down at the books. It was true that she had not had a night out in a couple of months. She knew she was obsessed about nailing the Tonaldos, and knowing that she made sure she did
not
spend every waking moment plotting against them. She
was
due for a night where she did not strap on her sword…

‘Okay,’ Andrea said.

Zoe gave a little ‘squee’ of delight and bounced off to see whether their lone customer needed help. It was nice to know she was actually not as much of a ditz as she generally made herself sound.

~~~

Penny sat at her computer, checking for information on DeWitt Imports. What she found was boring.

DeWitt Imports had been founded by an Edward DeWitt, who was dead, and was now run by a board of directors none of whom had their names listed on the company’s decidedly basic website. There were a few contact numbers, mainly for those wanting to ship something in or out of the country. They advertised an ability to ship very large consignments anywhere in the world.

The company listing was a little more informative in that it listed a John Tonaldo as one of the executive board members, but not much else was forthcoming. The company was publicly traded and apparently doing fairly well given the stock price, though there had been a dip when their previous auditor had been hauled over the coals.

‘DeWitt?’ June said from behind her. ‘Why are you looking them up?’

‘Oh, Thorpe had me transcribing notes about a meeting he had with their board. One of the people there was John Tonaldo.’

‘As in the mob family?’

‘Uh-huh. Not that that means DeWitt is dirty.’

‘No…’ June’s brow furrowed. ‘I heard Mister Leighton arguing with Thorpe about them though. Their last auditor lost their licence over irregularities in the DeWitt audit. I think Mister Leighton didn’t want to take them on.’

‘Huh. I’ll ask Red about John Tonaldo on Friday.’

‘You’re coming to the club then? I thought you might be out sweeping the streets.’

Penny smiled. ‘All patrol and no play makes Cygnus a dull Ultra.’

11
^th
September.

Penny had more or less given up on the evening. There had been a purse snatcher in the park, though the victim was a local and there had been no hugging, or even thanks, this time. She had swung north over Downtown and seen nothing of interest. She suspected she was missing things she could help with, but she had to keep practising to get better, right? She was, however, getting despondent and decided to swing out over the docks quickly before heading home. The flying practice was a good idea if nothing else.

She was looping over the south edge of Deale Harbour when she spotted something on one of the rooftops below her. There was a figure down there, hidden in the dark and the shadows. Whoever it was was moving across the roof in a suspicious manner, and that was about the most interesting thing Penny had seen all night. Swinging around, she lost height quickly and came in low, skimming the edge of the wall as she swept in toward her target.

Ten yards out she recognised the slim figure with the sword fixed to her back, pulled up sharply, and landed on the roof’s tarred surface as lightly as she could. Twilight turned, pulling a large automatic pistol from her thigh in one, fluid motion. Penny put up her hands placatingly as the barrel aimed at her head.

Twilight relaxed visibly and dropped her aim. ‘Oh, it’s you. Get down before they see you.’ Her voice was low and Penny frowned, but she also did as requested and moved toward the black-clad woman in a crouch.

‘They?’

Twilight holstered her pistol and picked up a pair of solid-looking binoculars. Placing them to her eyes, she looked down toward the loading bay area below them. ‘Them,’ she said.

Penny peered over the edge and found herself watching a number of men moving crates from a truck into one of the warehouse buildings. It seemed a little late to be moving cargo. ‘Drugs?’

‘Maybe. The crates are labelled with DeWitt’s logo…’

‘DeWitt?’

‘Heard of them? They ship various things for the Tonaldos. Drugs mostly, slaves…’